"The Personal Price of Free Speech"

[hfojvt]

While searching for the title of a book, I found this site. While I have not read the site, I thought DU might find it timely and interesting.

http://www.jeanhay.com/OTHER/SCOTT.HTM

"Eugene Debs described him as ``the greatest teacher in the United States.'' Philosopher H. L. Mencken said of him, ``There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character. Nearing has it.'' Even the Dead Poets Society's recent inductee, beatnik Allen Ginsberg, had an opinion: ``Scott Nearing was a grand old man, a real mensch.'' 1

Yet, except for die-hard left-wing activists and some in the environmental movement, few people these days have heard of Scott Nearing and fewer still think of him as a front-line defender of freedom of speech and the press in the first half of this century.

For Nearing, free speech was the means to an end -- the delivery of his message, one usually with a theme of economic justice. Yet he found himself repeatedly defending not just the message he was trying to convey, but his right to convey it. While all of his defenses were notable, many of them were unsuccessful. And in several instances, there was a high personal price to pay for keeping integrity intact."


That's the introduction. What really smacked me in the chops was the passage from "The making of a radical: A political autobiography" which was the title of the book I was looking for (actually I was looking for the year it was published, but oddly enough, I apparently had the title wrong in my notebook as I had it as "Education of a Radical") It was a book I had read way back in 1989 when I was visiting my parents on summer vacation in graduate school.

The final passage seems brutal to me, in that Nearing pulls no punches even when writing to the parents of a slain soldier. It is a message too harsh to ever win an election, but is it wrong?

"Well, he had asked for it, so I wrote him:

'Dear John:

We live in a society of butchers and murderers. we butcher fellow creatures for food and for sport, and murder fellow humans for pelf and for power. Years ago you and Mary decided to go to work for the plunderers and killers who run our social system. In return, you got considerable comfort, a measure of recognition and some power. Then they murdered your beloved son. That was part of the price you paid for living in a world run by plunderers and killers. No use blinking the facts. You know them as well or better than I do.

When I wrote Mary, I did not put it quite so baldly as this, but I stated the issue clearly enough so that she might get the point, learn the bitter lesson and profit by it. You asked me to cancel that letter. I agreed.

Now you ask me to tell one of our conventional social lies, --to write and say it is a nice book and thank her for sending it. Destroy the letter? Yes, if you wish. That is a negative lie--dodging the issue by saying nothing about it. Write a socially correct note, pretending to express a sentiment I do not feel? No. That is a positive lie and I will have no part in telling it.

You and I (and Mary) are getting on in years. We should have learned to face the music. I am all for facing it here and now. I either say what I think or I say nothing. I think we live in a community built on lies, robbery, butchery and murder. There is no dodging the issue. I also think that the lying, robbery, butchery and murder will continue till we face the facts, turn about and reshape our lives. Again there is no dodging.

Also, I say it is time we stood up and told each other the truth, without fear of favor … This is grim doctrine, but we live in a grim world where millions of young victims are paying with their lives for ignorance, stupidity, greed, hypocrisy and connivance. Maybe it is wiser to tell Mary, after all.'

I hesitated for a couple of days before I sent the letter to John. He was in his late fifties. Twenty-five years before, while in the labor movement, he could take hard knocks. Could he still take them? Would they do him any good? Then there was Mary, bowed down by her grief. Could she meet the issue or would it crush her? Twenty-five eyars ago she would have met it and held to her course. A quarter century of soft bourgeois living might have so corrupted her that she could not stand up to the implications of the social system under which she had eaten from the fleshpots.

Against these personal and private considerations I set social responsibility. The leaders of the West were doing what they could to perpetuate a war system. In the press and over radio, at the graduation exercises in Annapolis and West Point, in the elementary and high schools and universities, they were straining every nerve to recruit a new crop of youngsters who would destroy and kill on order. I sent the letter….. "

"I think we live in a community built on lies, robbery, butchery and murder."

OUCH!!

[hfojvt]

1. Scott Nearing was a socialist

"Socialists are looking for the way to end ignorance and spread knowledge, to end poverty and equalize plenty, to end haphazard living and substitute planning, to end chaos and bring order, to end war and make peace." "Making of a Radical" p. 274

"The two things the world needs most are socialism and peace, but both are contrary to the interests of the most powerful men of our time."
Betrand Russell "In Defense of Idleness and other essays" p. 106

[midnight]

2. Thanks for introducing me to Scott Nearing. I don't recall his

name or ideas. I wonder if the war that his friend's son died in was the Vietnam war? How somethings are still the same different war same theme-Lies,robbery,butchery and murder.

[hfojvt]

3. He's not widely taught, surprisingly enough

my introduction came when I read a book by Studs Terkel interviewing him and his wife. His "main" book - "Living the Good Life" was one I always kept stocked in my bookstore, and I think it was my biggest seller as far as a single title goes. Maybe 17 copies over seven years, so I was not setting any Amazon sales records, but you do what you can,

[Bluerthanblue]

4. :) the maple syrup man!

I remember reading his and Helen's book on sugaring years ago. They were still living when I read it- over in Maine I believe.

I still have it somewhere- it had much more than sugaring info in it. Living in concert with nature and each other. I'm going to have to search around and try and find it.

Thanks for this post!

peace~

[hfojvt]

5. as I remember it, he seemed alot more organized and skilled than myself

building a stone house and gardening. The "good life" was very disciplined and planned out. I probably should read it again, but at this point I feel like most of my life is over, at least I have settled into a spot where I am comfortable looking ahead.

I also thought his autobiography left out a huge hole, the story of his first marriage and estrangement from his son. It was like a Congressional biography - nothing mentioned about the personal life.